


Inspiration

by vtn



Category: Matthew Good Band
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-11-12
Updated: 2006-11-12
Packaged: 2017-11-17 16:44:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,825
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/553715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vtn/pseuds/vtn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>MGB aren't getting inspired, so instead they get drunk.  Matt gets a blowjob in one part.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Inspiration

We can't do it tonight. We can't make it happen. Maybe it's the rain, maybe it's the unfamiliar setting, maybe it's the lack of scantily-clad women, maybe it's because it's Monday. On the other hand, I love the rain and I love change, I've never required scantily-clad women (although I never say no to them), and it's Wednesday.

We've been here in these four walls for six hours. We've been in and out for almost twelve. At five we went out and got pizza, which we still haven't finished all of. Three pizzas between four people go a long way, though. Before that, at noon, we went out for lunch but got distracted by a protest. I suggested that someone put on a clown suit and join them, but no one was biting. So here we are, watching the clock tick down toward midnight.

"Poker?" Ian is shuffling a deck of cards from hand to hand.

"No!" we all respond in unison, and he starts dealing himself another hand of Klondike Solitaire. The deck is missing about ten cards, which have been replaced with index card cut-outs. (Some of them I wrote on, others Dave threw up on, I think a pig ate one of them somehow.) Poker's just not as much fun when you don't have to come up with sneaky methods to cheat at it.

"Go Fish? Old Maid? Anything! I've already played Solitaire eight damn times!" Ian exhales through his nose and flips over the top card of each pile. He whistles. "Three jacks! And they've all got something under 'em!"

"Only two are the same color," Rich points out.

"I don't care!"

"Ian, stop being such a woman."

"Rich, stop being such a misogynist."

"I bet you can't even spell 'misogynist'."

Dave starts playing the riff from 'Back in Black' to shut them up. The first time he did this, we all sang along with air guitar and the whole nine yards, but after six arguments and six AC/DC tributes your arm gets tired.

"We should cash in on the reality TV craze, begun with Survivor," I say and am greeted by a chorus of groans. "We place Matt Good, your average twenty-something guy, in an abandoned-house-turned-recording studio with three other men who may actually be robots or trained monkeys. As the hours tick by, watch as he reaches the heights of insanity yet unknown to man!"

"Right. Average." Dave snorts. "You're already crazy, Matt. If you weren't, we'd get a new songwriter."

"And you'd still call it the Matthew Good Band, wouldn't you," I say.

"'Course! It'd be ironic!" Laughing, Dave deposits his guitar on the floor. He takes one of the remaining cold slices of pizza and walks up the stairs, boots making a noise that rings out almost metallic through the wide hallway.

I slump against the wall, defeated.

"No way is he leaving," says Ian, taking a slice of his own. Not realizing there's a three of clubs in his hand, he accidentally contributes to the destruction of our poor, abused Bicycle deck.

"Okay, that's it, the moment it stops raining I'm going out," says Rich. "There must be one 7-Eleven open in this town that'll sell me a deck of cards."

"Get one with maple leafs or hockey sticks on the back," says Ian. "Or, like, polar bears. I dunno."

"If he's not leaving, where is he going?" I say, finally finding a hole in the unending banter. Rich stifles a laugh.

"Either the kitchen or the bedroom, and if it's the latter, he wants you to follow him." He eyes Ian, who seems to have been thinking the same thing. My chest tightens.

"No," I say sharply. "No."

"Geez," says Ian, shuffling the cards between his hands again.

"You are not bringing that up here," I say, a little louder. "I can deal with a lot of things, I can even deal with being stuck in this godforsaken building with you two and Dave, but you aren't bringing that up tonight."

"Hold it," Ian says, flicking the back of the card deck. I never understood why people do that. What is it, to get the cards to limber up before playing with them? To show them who's boss? And if that's the case, why is _Ian_ doing it? And if that's the case, does Ian flick them because he has an inferiority complex? And if that's the case—

"Hold it," he says again. "You're allowed to joke about the fact that I sleepwalk and I pissed myself in my sleep once, and we're allowed to joke about Rich's terminal bed head and your awful teeth and how white Dave is, but the fact that you guys have sex is different? God, I make fun of Dave's girlfriends all the time. How's this different?" I throw up my arms.

"Oh, I see how it is. I'm Dave's girlfriend. That's it. Dave's girlfriend. The part where you explained to Rich that this whole thing doesn't get talked about—did you conveniently forget that?" I kick off one of my shoes, for some reason feeling like it accentuates my point.

"Sure, whatever." Ian shuffles his foot and goes back to dealing cards, looking actually a little humbled. Probably more by himself than me, though. "I wish we had some beer."

"What, so you could get me and Dave drunk and watch us get it on like it's going out of style? And then, post-going-out-of-style, laugh at us?"

I look around, feeling more than a little awkward. Rich is pointedly ignoring us.

" _Jeez_ ," Ian says again, softer but more pointedly, "Are we still in high school? I want some beer because I'm thirsty. But if I didn't think you were going to bite me in the jugular for it, I'd have joked that after a few beers, you'd probably be better looking than any of Dave's girlfriends, and that that was what made you different."

" _Jug_ ular," says Rich, "Is how you say that word. It's not _joo_ -gular."

"Anti-Semite," I put in, thankful for the subject change. "One of you is, anyway. I can't decide which."

"And I know you don't drink, by the way," Ian says. "These things happen when you've known a person for that many years." The door swings back open and Dave comes down the stairs, carrying a cardboard box.

"Did I miss anything interesting?" he says, wedging his chin in front of the box so that we can hear him. He looks back and forth. "Well, no one's got their clothes off, so I guess it wasn't _that_ interesting."

And I realize exactly where this conversation is firmly planted. And I lean forward until my forehead smacks against the wall.

"Matt," says Ian, and I can hear his footsteps behind me. "Are you okay?"

"He looks fine to me," Rich starts, but Ian and I interrupt him at once.

"I'm fine," I say through a laugh, "I just hate you all," and at the same time, Ian says "You don't _know_." This is true. He doesn't _know_. That's the hard part of being the last person to the party. It's surprising how much history you can pack into a few years.

"But he was fine," Rich says. There is a thump and I turn around. Dave has placed the box on the floor.

"What's in the box?" I ask, voicing what I'm sure everyone is feeling.

"Not much you'll be interested in, I'm afraid," Dave says, rubbing the back of his neck with his wrist. "I was looking for the bathroom and I found a wine cellar."

"Did you find a bathroom?" Ian asks.

"No, I just pissed in the wine bottles. Yes, I found a bathroom." Rich and Ian watch him. Rich gives a 'get on with it' gesture. "And so my executive decision, even though I'm not any kind of executive, is that we are going to stop all attempts at recording and just get drunk like they did it in ancient Greece."

There are cheers whooped and high-fives slapped, and I get frustrated all over again and walk up the stairs.

Dust swirls up around my steps and I wonder how it can be dusty even if bands are here all the time. I realize it's just testimony to how much this house is falling apart. I briefly fantasize about lighting it on fire or blowing it up.

Downstairs the murmur of my drunken bandmates rises up through the heat vent. Like central heating, it makes my hands feel dry.

There are footsteps in the silvery dust. I can tell by the accumulation of dust how old the footsteps are. I see Dave's footsteps, recognize them by both the clear floor beneath them and the fact that I know what the bottom of his shoes look like. Coupled with Ian's earlier comments, that thought gives me a little ringing in my ears and I think about how obvious it is that I want some things that I don't want to think about.

I draw a smiley face in the dust and contemplate adding that in the time it took me to draw it, over one hundred people died.

But I don't.

Every breath I make is a murder. Funny, that. Funny when I realize I can't do a thing about it.

I think about dying sometimes. Not like I want to. Just I'm sort of awed by it, as I am with anything that huge. Not even the modern first world could make death small and cordoned off, no matter how much it wants to.

Tonight I think about a different way to detach myself from life. Tonight I think about what I'd like to do lying in the dust by the patched-over window. I wonder how much stress the foundation of this house could take.

I lose myself so much in thought, looking out what parts of the window still have glass on them into inky black forest, that I don't notice someone has entered the room until I see a crouched figure on the floor. I'm ready to freak out, but I calm myself.

"Dave," I say softly, extending my hands, palms-up.

"Nah."

"Ian."

"Mm-hmm. I was wondering what you were doing so quiet up here." He's still holding cards, and he smells like beer.

"You're plastered," I say, laughing. "Go back downstairs. Maybe if you act cute enough Dave will blow you."

"If I had to be blown by someone in this band, Dave would be my last pick. He's got hardly any lips at all, man." Ian laughs a little nervously and straightens his sleeves. He makes a noncommittal noise but doesn't speak any further.

"Well we could inject his lips with whatever that stuff is women use to make their lips inflate."

"Are we actually, like, talking about the logistics of Dave sucking my dick?" Ian bursts out laughing, now. I grin, on the verge of what feels like an epiphany. The epiphany comes.

"You're _jealous_!" I shout triumphantly. I even manage to put my finger up in the air like there should be a lightbulb floating above it.

"Of you getting your freak on with Genn? You wish." Ian straightens his sleeves again, with conviction. "It's like I said. This ain't high school."

"Of me and Dave being open about our having gotten the aforementioned freak on. I think it wasn't just me getting my freak on. It was a mutual freak-on. Or the getting thereof."

"Rich and Dave are right. You _do_ make more sense when I'm drunk."

"You _are_ jealous, though," I persist.

"Man, I'm wasted. What are we even talking about?" Ian flops down onto the floor, leaning his head back. The little bit of light coming in the window highlights tiny hairs on his neck. I get down on my knees and slide my hand into his hair, press my lips to his.

Ian leans into the kiss and then, as if just realizing what he's doing, pulls back with a start.

"What the fuck, Matt?"

I open my mouth to tell him I don't know, but Ian grabs me by the shirt collar, pulls me back to kiss me again. What the fuck is right. He's not Dave, but he's good. Shy and slow.

But at the same time shyly and slowly unbuttoning my jeans, I realize. And I'm letting him, spreading my legs slightly to give him better access, making incoherent noises into his mouth. The fact is, there's not a single person in the world right now who has a right to be pissed at me for doing this. And it's a damn good feeling.

Ian pulls away, slowly, breathing fermented yeast into my face.

"Against the wall," he says, breathless. I obey. The house creaks behind me. Ian works my jeans and underwear down to my ankles, gulps, and looks up at me. "If I forget about this tomorrow, don't remind me." I shake my head. "But—but you can tell Dave and Rich whatever you want. I don't _care_ —"

And he cuts himself off by sliding his mouth around my dick. I lean my head back, briefly wondering whether that'll be bruised come tomorrow, and then let him work my dick with his lips and tongue, my mind fixing on the word _tomorrow_ like a broken record. _Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow_ and I'm coming in his mouth while contemplating that _tomorrow_ really doesn't look like it should be spelled that way.

Ian spits on the floor. Someone will find that and chalk it up to rock star excess. I zip up my jeans, we exchange nods, and I start to go downstairs. I almost bump right into Dave as he's walking up the stairwell, and I apologize, my ears burning as I wonder whether Dave is going to notice things.

"Let's fuck," he says, his voice low, apparently not noticing Ian behind me.

"You're the champion of pick-up lines, Genn, and don't use that kind of language around Browne over here."

"Hey, Ian," Dave says and gets out of the way so Ian can go down the stairs.

"Ian just blew me," I say, testing whether or not Ian will actually care or if he was just bluffing before. It doesn't matter. Between me and Dave we can kick his ass.

"Yeah," says Ian, nodding.

"So no sloppy seconds for me, then?" Dave fakes a pout.

"Apparently I've become a commodity. But fine. Let's. Let's get this godforsaken night over with."

"Cheers," Dave says to Ian, and Ian starts down the stairs.

This is about when I step back and my foot crashes through one of the rotting boards of the once-kitchen.

I shout something profane and pull myself back up. It's loud enough that Rich hears, or maybe I just stuck my foot in his face because I guess the basement is under the kitchen, but either way he starts up the stairs.

"Is everyone okay up there?" he shouts, and we all respond in the affirmative. He makes the rest of the way up the stairs and eyes the damage I've done with my wayward step. He walks around it and tests the wall behind it, which is the only thing separating him from the outside world.

And which falls.

"Oh," says Ian.

"Fuck?" says Rich. He's pulling himself up to a crouch, rubbing his sore back. The rain and wind rush in through the hole in the wall. The hole has revealed one of the house's wall supports, and I cautiously put my weight on it. It leans and then, with a little help from me and Dave, comes free, causing another section of wall to collapse and leaving us with…

"Y'know, this would make a _really good battering ram_ ," I say, unable to stop grinning. Dave returns my grin, and soon Rich and Ian are smiling too.

By one-thirty, we've managed to turn the house almost entirely into a pile of rubble. We are all soaked in rain and sweat, bruised and bloody in places, and, in the case of my three companions, utterly plastered.

We stand there, hunched and panting, armed with splintering supports. Thunder cracks overhead.

"Let's move the equipment back into the van," Ian says as he tries to catch his breath. He sounds almost exactly the same as he did after kissing me, which briefly reminds me that now there's absolutely no chance anyone other than Dave and Rich will figure out what went on in the former living room.

Each one of us turns toward the basement, probably hoping the rain hasn't destroyed our amps already.

"We're also taking the rest of the wine," says Rich. The rest of the wine is all of three bottles. I have no doubt this number will be greatly reduced by sunrise.

And then it hits me.

"You know," I say, "This gives me a great idea for a song."  



End file.
